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Pop art, the mid-20th century visual movement, shares a name with pop music | 0:00:27 | 0:00:33 | |
and Peter Blake has a significant place in the history of both. | 0:00:33 | 0:00:36 | |
His record sleeves, including most famously Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, | 0:00:36 | 0:00:43 | |
brought to a wider audience the techniques pop artists had developed - collages, | 0:00:43 | 0:00:49 | |
still lives, self portraits. | 0:00:49 | 0:00:51 | |
It used contemporary materials such as lapel badges, | 0:00:51 | 0:00:55 | |
newspaper and magazine cuttings and advertising wrappings. | 0:00:55 | 0:00:59 | |
Blake's work in pictures, album covers and book jackets | 0:00:59 | 0:01:04 | |
is often inspired by his lifelong passion for collecting objects, | 0:01:04 | 0:01:08 | |
'many of which featured in the show he curated at the Museum of Everything in London.' | 0:01:08 | 0:01:14 | |
We're sitting in this gallery and looking around this exhibition | 0:01:14 | 0:01:19 | |
of your own collections and others, a gallery-goer might now say, "There's a Peter Blake over there," | 0:01:19 | 0:01:26 | |
or, "That work looks influenced by Peter Blake," because you seem to have a very recognisable style. | 0:01:26 | 0:01:32 | |
Do you have a sense of what the Peter Blake style is? | 0:01:32 | 0:01:36 | |
Em, I do, yes. Absolutely. | 0:01:36 | 0:01:39 | |
And I must say in recent years I've kind of... | 0:01:39 | 0:01:43 | |
..taken advantage of it. | 0:01:44 | 0:01:47 | |
I mean, there is a kind of Peter Blake Incorporated, almost, aspect of the work at the moment, | 0:01:47 | 0:01:55 | |
where I take these motifs like a heart | 0:01:55 | 0:01:59 | |
and a star and the rainbow | 0:01:59 | 0:02:02 | |
and a target | 0:02:02 | 0:02:04 | |
and almost claim them as my invention, which they're not. | 0:02:04 | 0:02:08 | |
But I think they've become recognisable as my work. | 0:02:08 | 0:02:12 | |
And I suppose these other ways of painting. | 0:02:12 | 0:02:16 | |
There are a lot of clues, really, to pick up on on it. | 0:02:16 | 0:02:20 | |
Some artists and writers, particularly later in their careers, | 0:02:20 | 0:02:24 | |
have spoken of feeling trapped by their style, trying to get outside it to do something different. | 0:02:24 | 0:02:31 | |
-Have you ever felt that frustration? -Never. I've always been so diverse, from the very beginning. | 0:02:31 | 0:02:37 | |
I think if I'd been... A lot of artists change towards the end of their lives, don't they? | 0:02:37 | 0:02:43 | |
Abstract expressionists become realists and realists become abstract expressionists. In a way, | 0:02:43 | 0:02:49 | |
I've always encompassed a lot of things anyway. | 0:02:49 | 0:02:53 | |
At the moment, I'm painting collages, making some jewellery. | 0:02:53 | 0:02:58 | |
So if I ever became bored with one aspect, I'd move across to another. | 0:02:58 | 0:03:05 | |
-The tag "pop art" is almost inevitably applied. If we put your name in a search... -"Godfather of". | 0:03:05 | 0:03:11 | |
Godfather of, you are. Does that label ever feel irritating or limiting to you? | 0:03:11 | 0:03:18 | |
Not really, because again it was a tiny section of what I've done. | 0:03:18 | 0:03:24 | |
I think my take on the phrase "pop art", | 0:03:24 | 0:03:27 | |
I... | 0:03:27 | 0:03:29 | |
I tell a story that a group of us were having dinner in the very early '60s, | 0:03:29 | 0:03:36 | |
Richard Smith, Robyn Denny, a group of painters, with Lawrence Alloway. | 0:03:36 | 0:03:40 | |
And he was very much a mentor of the younger artists. | 0:03:40 | 0:03:44 | |
And he was a critic very involved with the ICA. | 0:03:44 | 0:03:48 | |
We were talking about what I was doing and I explained I was trying to make an art | 0:03:48 | 0:03:54 | |
that was a parallel to pop music so you would read it in the same way. | 0:03:54 | 0:03:59 | |
And he said, "What? A kind of pop art?" And I maintain that's how the phrase came about. | 0:03:59 | 0:04:05 | |
I've been associated with it from the beginning | 0:04:05 | 0:04:09 | |
and I think the problems came up when, for instance, in America | 0:04:09 | 0:04:13 | |
it was never recognised really that there was any pop art in this country | 0:04:13 | 0:04:19 | |
until Marco Livingstone put on a show at the RA | 0:04:19 | 0:04:23 | |
and he reassessed the whole situation and suddenly put it all into perspective of what happened when. | 0:04:23 | 0:04:29 | |
And I think at that point I began to get some kind of credit. | 0:04:29 | 0:04:33 | |
In the way that Impressionism was originally an insult, | 0:04:33 | 0:04:37 | |
it's sometimes been used in a disparaging way. People use it to suggest it's not serious art | 0:04:37 | 0:04:43 | |
or high art. | 0:04:43 | 0:04:45 | |
They do and perhaps it isn't. | 0:04:45 | 0:04:48 | |
Certainly, it's always been a problem I've had to deal with | 0:04:48 | 0:04:53 | |
that I think among my fellow painters, I think often I'm not... | 0:04:53 | 0:04:59 | |
If you think of Frank Auerbach and me, | 0:04:59 | 0:05:03 | |
you would think of me as a lighter artist than Frank, | 0:05:03 | 0:05:07 | |
which is...I mean... | 0:05:07 | 0:05:10 | |
I love his paintings and he's a friend, but you would say he's a more serious artist than me | 0:05:10 | 0:05:16 | |
and I kind of accept that. As I say, I've been very diverse. | 0:05:16 | 0:05:20 | |
I haven't chosen really to take that path of very high art. | 0:05:20 | 0:05:25 | |
It's always had a vulgarity, it's always been populist, so I accept that. | 0:05:25 | 0:05:31 | |
# Well, the joke's on me I'm off to join the circus... # | 0:05:31 | 0:05:35 | |
Blake is 29. | 0:05:35 | 0:05:38 | |
Of the four, he's much the most established. | 0:05:38 | 0:05:41 | |
His cheerful, uncompromising comments on the modern world have been exhibited at the Royal Academy | 0:05:41 | 0:05:48 | |
and he's sold pictures to all sorts of organisations in America as well as in this country. | 0:05:48 | 0:05:55 | |
# ..made a crying clown out of me | 0:05:55 | 0:05:57 | |
-# -Goodbye, cruel world... -# | 0:05:58 | 0:06:01 | |
Pop art, it was seen as being something very modern, immediate and young, | 0:06:01 | 0:06:07 | |
in that same way that there's a generation now who we call young British artists | 0:06:07 | 0:06:13 | |
and they're getting older. | 0:06:13 | 0:06:15 | |
Did that become a burden that you were associated with that? | 0:06:15 | 0:06:20 | |
No, I think not. Because of this diversity, I've never relied on it for a living | 0:06:20 | 0:06:27 | |
and I've never kind of... It's never been my one aim. | 0:06:27 | 0:06:31 | |
So it wasn't a problem. Still isn't. | 0:06:31 | 0:06:33 | |
A couple of your earliest serious works, Children Reading Comics, which is from 1954, | 0:06:33 | 0:06:39 | |
and ABC Minors, 1955, | 0:06:39 | 0:06:42 | |
they seem to a viewer to open up your childhood to us, or aspects of it, | 0:06:42 | 0:06:47 | |
and what seems crucial is | 0:06:47 | 0:06:50 | |
that you were drenched in popular culture, in entertainment, from very early on. | 0:06:50 | 0:06:56 | |
Yeah, probably. | 0:06:56 | 0:06:59 | |
I was seven when the Second World War started, so I was really a child of the war. | 0:06:59 | 0:07:04 | |
I was evacuated. Until I was 14, that was childhood. | 0:07:04 | 0:07:09 | |
Suddenly, the war ended, I came back to Dartford. | 0:07:09 | 0:07:13 | |
I got a place at Gravesend School of Art, so adulthood started instantly when childhood stopped, | 0:07:13 | 0:07:20 | |
in a curious way. So at 14 I was at art school. The first year at the Royal College of Art in 1953, | 0:07:20 | 0:07:28 | |
it was compulsory that you were in the life room the whole time. | 0:07:28 | 0:07:32 | |
There would have been 10 life models at any time, with crowds all around. | 0:07:32 | 0:07:36 | |
And then you were released from that and suddenly you were on your own. | 0:07:36 | 0:07:41 | |
It was at that point those pictures started, so in a way childhood was only five years ago. | 0:07:41 | 0:07:48 | |
So I think I...in that moment when you choose where you'll go, | 0:07:48 | 0:07:53 | |
I think I kind of chose to be, at that point, autobiographical. | 0:07:53 | 0:07:58 | |
So the picture of the two little boys is my brother and my cousin. | 0:07:58 | 0:08:02 | |
They're wearing their ABC Minors badges, so I was still painting about a childhood that was barely over. | 0:08:02 | 0:08:10 | |
And it went on from there. I think I've never lost... | 0:08:10 | 0:08:14 | |
-I'm still a child, in a curious way. -I want to go into the autobiography of those paintings. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:20 | |
They tell us that from very early on comics in one case and cinema in the others, | 0:08:20 | 0:08:26 | |
-you had a great exposure to those things. -My mum used to take me to the cinema almost every day. | 0:08:26 | 0:08:33 | |
Almost, probably, from the age of two. | 0:08:33 | 0:08:36 | |
So I would have been seeing Shirley Temple films | 0:08:36 | 0:08:41 | |
and the big Disney films as they came out. Snow White I would have seen when it came out. | 0:08:41 | 0:08:47 | |
And then as I got a little bit older she would take me in the evening. | 0:08:47 | 0:08:51 | |
So I had this background of the history of cinema | 0:08:51 | 0:08:55 | |
and I must have seen... There was a certain Bowery Boys film that was always the support film. | 0:08:55 | 0:09:01 | |
I must have seen it 100 times. And then the interest... | 0:09:01 | 0:09:06 | |
My mum and aunt took me to the professional wrestling | 0:09:06 | 0:09:11 | |
in 1947, so I was 15 then. And I've had a lifelong interest in that. | 0:09:11 | 0:09:17 | |
And circuses and funfairs are things I loved from a child. | 0:09:17 | 0:09:22 | |
So, you know, it was that strata of entertainment that I was, | 0:09:22 | 0:09:27 | |
that I started off with and have kind of stayed with. | 0:09:27 | 0:09:31 | |
And some of it comes out, the movies for example, very directly, with references to Tarzan, Wizard of Oz | 0:09:31 | 0:09:39 | |
-and those kinds of films. They have stayed with you. -Very much. | 0:09:39 | 0:09:43 | |
They've become even stronger. In recent years, there's been | 0:09:43 | 0:09:47 | |
quite a lot of painting and things | 0:09:48 | 0:09:51 | |
about the kind of phenomena of a girl moving into womanhood. | 0:09:51 | 0:09:58 | |
And there are so many instances. The Wizard of Oz does it, | 0:09:58 | 0:10:03 | |
Snow White does it, | 0:10:03 | 0:10:05 | |
of children in puberty in danger and usually suddenly rescued. | 0:10:05 | 0:10:12 | |
Dorothy wakes up and... | 0:10:12 | 0:10:15 | |
And I think that's an area of life that I've been intrigued with. | 0:10:15 | 0:10:19 | |
Your mother's fascination with cinema. | 0:10:19 | 0:10:23 | |
It seems not excessive, but impressive that somebody would go virtually every day, | 0:10:23 | 0:10:28 | |
-but she just had that fascination. -People did then. | 0:10:28 | 0:10:32 | |
I think what happened was there was no entertainment during the war | 0:10:32 | 0:10:37 | |
so there was an enormous surge in people going out to the cinema, football matches. | 0:10:37 | 0:10:43 | |
You had crowds of 60,000 every week. | 0:10:43 | 0:10:45 | |
So people were flooding back. We used to go to speedway, stock car racing. | 0:10:45 | 0:10:51 | |
All these things started up again. | 0:10:51 | 0:10:53 | |
Was there any sense with either of your parents of an artistic streak or anywhere in the family? | 0:10:53 | 0:10:59 | |
Looking back, there was. They had no chance to go to art school. | 0:10:59 | 0:11:04 | |
Mum came down from South Shields and I was born when she was 20. | 0:11:04 | 0:11:09 | |
She probably came down when she was 18 and was a nurse | 0:11:09 | 0:11:14 | |
and moved towards being a seamstress. And probably now would have gone to college | 0:11:14 | 0:11:20 | |
and done the fashion course. | 0:11:20 | 0:11:23 | |
And Dad was an electrician. He drew beautiful little drawings for us of things he was interested in, | 0:11:23 | 0:11:30 | |
like steam trains and boats. | 0:11:30 | 0:11:33 | |
But it's hypothetical. | 0:11:33 | 0:11:35 | |
Now I think they would have gone to art school, but there wasn't the chance to. | 0:11:35 | 0:11:41 | |
And I was very lucky. When I went at the age of 14, | 0:11:41 | 0:11:46 | |
there were grants, the schools were opening back up. Perfect time, really. | 0:11:46 | 0:11:51 | |
As soon as profiles started to be written about you, they would always say "working-class artist". | 0:11:51 | 0:11:57 | |
When, growing up, did you become aware of what that meant, being working class? | 0:11:57 | 0:12:03 | |
I think if one has to... | 0:12:03 | 0:12:05 | |
If you contextualise it, I think I'm upper working class, whatever that might be. | 0:12:05 | 0:12:11 | |
My parents worked. That accounts for that. I was never... | 0:12:11 | 0:12:16 | |
We were never poor, | 0:12:16 | 0:12:18 | |
really poor. | 0:12:18 | 0:12:20 | |
And we lived in a nice house, so we were upper working class. | 0:12:20 | 0:12:26 | |
But later on you become far more aware. When you meet really upper class posh people, | 0:12:26 | 0:12:33 | |
you realise how working class you probably are. It's relative. | 0:12:33 | 0:12:38 | |
As you mentioned, you were part of that particular British generation of wartime evacuees. | 0:12:38 | 0:12:44 | |
Many people who that happened to have very vivid memories. Do you? | 0:12:44 | 0:12:49 | |
Extraordinarily vivid. | 0:12:49 | 0:12:51 | |
When war was declared on a Sunday morning and that speech was on the radio, | 0:12:51 | 0:12:57 | |
there was an immediate panic. | 0:12:57 | 0:12:59 | |
One person in our street had an Anderson shelter, so all the children rushed to it. | 0:12:59 | 0:13:05 | |
We looked towards Germany, expecting invading armies instantly, and we were evacuated the next day. | 0:13:05 | 0:13:11 | |
Unofficially. | 0:13:11 | 0:13:13 | |
There was someone in Dartford who came from a little village in Essex, | 0:13:13 | 0:13:19 | |
so we were evacuated to a village called Helions Bumpstead, which is almost a comedy village. | 0:13:19 | 0:13:25 | |
It was next to Steeple Bumpstead, which was a comedy village name. | 0:13:25 | 0:13:29 | |
It's right on the intersection of Essex, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk. | 0:13:29 | 0:13:34 | |
Incredibly rural and remote. And then what happened was that because we were evacuated, | 0:13:34 | 0:13:41 | |
there was a curious system that you still took the examination of where you'd come from. | 0:13:41 | 0:13:47 | |
So I took the examination for grammar school all by myself in Steeple Bumpstead school. | 0:13:47 | 0:13:53 | |
-I didn't get in. -But it was for Kent. -Yes. My brother and sister both got into the grammar schools, | 0:13:53 | 0:13:59 | |
which were very good in Dartford. I then got into the technical school | 0:13:59 | 0:14:03 | |
and when I went for the interview, they said, "The art school is part of the technical school. | 0:14:03 | 0:14:09 | |
"If you want to go to art school, you can pop round the corner, do a drawing exam and go there." | 0:14:09 | 0:14:16 | |
So it was presented to me, at the age of 14, this whole thing of starting at a very definite point. | 0:14:16 | 0:14:23 | |
I never had any plans to be an art student. It started from then. | 0:14:24 | 0:14:28 | |
Another piece of luck is that you didn't specialise too soon in any one art form. | 0:14:28 | 0:14:34 | |
The kind of training you got, impossible now, is you were trained in almost all available art forms. | 0:14:34 | 0:14:41 | |
Yes, I did what was the last year of the Intermediate Examination. | 0:14:41 | 0:14:45 | |
That had gone back since the mid-19th century. | 0:14:45 | 0:14:49 | |
It's the same teaching I would have got then. You did life drawing, costumed life drawing, | 0:14:49 | 0:14:55 | |
silversmithing, woodwork, stone carving, | 0:14:55 | 0:14:59 | |
wood engraving, | 0:14:59 | 0:15:02 | |
architecture, anatomy, and my chosen craft was Roman lettering, | 0:15:02 | 0:15:06 | |
which was very much a discipline. | 0:15:06 | 0:15:09 | |
So that was the Intermediate, then I did the commercial art course. | 0:15:09 | 0:15:14 | |
The thing is about that, I only did half the course, | 0:15:14 | 0:15:18 | |
so, in a way, even now I'm a kind of rogue designer | 0:15:18 | 0:15:22 | |
because I don't...I don't know what I would have learnt in the second part. | 0:15:22 | 0:15:28 | |
I did typesetting and Roman lettering and I got halfway through, | 0:15:28 | 0:15:32 | |
but I do things, both as a painter and as a graphic designer, because of my background | 0:15:32 | 0:15:39 | |
that if I was a real painter, I wouldn't do and if I was a real graphic designer I wouldn't do. | 0:15:39 | 0:15:46 | |
Luckily, I have this rogue element. | 0:15:46 | 0:15:48 | |
And also lucky, that very broad training has led, as you referred to, to the variety of your work. | 0:15:48 | 0:15:56 | |
It has. Certainly in printmaking. | 0:15:56 | 0:15:59 | |
I mean, both those disciplines in later life I went back to. | 0:15:59 | 0:16:04 | |
Having been taught wood engraving, | 0:16:04 | 0:16:07 | |
in the early '70s, I retook it. I thought I'd like to do it again | 0:16:07 | 0:16:14 | |
and I got books and I vaguely remembered how to hold the engraving tool. | 0:16:14 | 0:16:20 | |
I got books on how to do it, I did some practice blocks | 0:16:20 | 0:16:24 | |
and then I cut a portfolio called Side Show. | 0:16:24 | 0:16:28 | |
They're incredibly detailed. I don't know how I did them. | 0:16:28 | 0:16:33 | |
There's a strong sense in what you've said of being an accidental artist, | 0:16:33 | 0:16:38 | |
other people making the decisions directing you to art, then painting. | 0:16:38 | 0:16:43 | |
Was there a point at which ambition kicked in and you started to think, "I really want to do this"? | 0:16:43 | 0:16:50 | |
I wanted to be a painter, once I was at art school. But I wanted to be a painter anyway. | 0:16:50 | 0:16:55 | |
That's what was so exciting. My teacher said, "You'll never make a living." Not me particularly, | 0:16:55 | 0:17:02 | |
but nobody at that point would make a living being a painter. | 0:17:02 | 0:17:07 | |
So you'd do the commercial art course and you'd got that to fall back on. | 0:17:07 | 0:17:13 | |
As the graphic designers were going through my work, I'd sent one little oil painting of my sister. | 0:17:13 | 0:17:19 | |
Sir Robin Darwin happened to be sitting on that selection committee at the Royal College of Art | 0:17:19 | 0:17:25 | |
and said, "I think we ought to show this work to the painting committee," and it was taken over | 0:17:25 | 0:17:31 | |
and they accepted me. | 0:17:31 | 0:17:33 | |
Obviously, counter histories are difficult and sometimes futile, | 0:17:33 | 0:17:38 | |
but you must have reflected if you had gone to grammar school. | 0:17:38 | 0:17:42 | |
Do you think it would have come out in some way, the art? | 0:17:42 | 0:17:47 | |
Probably. | 0:17:47 | 0:17:49 | |
I mean, who knows which direction anyone might go in? | 0:17:49 | 0:17:53 | |
I was once asked what I would do if I wasn't a painter | 0:17:53 | 0:17:59 | |
and after deep thought I went through maybe I would have worked in wood in some way | 0:17:59 | 0:18:05 | |
and then I decided I would have been a professional wrestler. So who knows where one might have gone? | 0:18:05 | 0:18:12 | |
-Are there painters who don't like painting? -Well, it's hard work. | 0:18:12 | 0:18:16 | |
-I'm sure it's mentally hard as well. -Well, it's a strain. | 0:18:16 | 0:18:22 | |
It's a very nerve... I mean, I haven't done it. | 0:18:22 | 0:18:25 | |
Normally at home I go through a whole ritual | 0:18:25 | 0:18:29 | |
where I dust the table and polish it and I lay out the paints and I get everything ready | 0:18:29 | 0:18:36 | |
-and I put a record on and I walk around with it. It's like a fighter. -Build up. -You build up to it. | 0:18:36 | 0:18:43 | |
When you started out, did you have a theory of art, a kind of manifesto in your head? | 0:18:43 | 0:18:49 | |
-Or was it all just instinct? -I had a good backing of history of art | 0:18:49 | 0:18:53 | |
by the time I started to paint. | 0:18:53 | 0:18:56 | |
I knew pretty much about painting. I knew I was a figurative painter, | 0:18:56 | 0:19:01 | |
I knew that I was interested in the Magic Realists in New York. | 0:19:01 | 0:19:06 | |
I had my influences. | 0:19:06 | 0:19:09 | |
And my fellow painters in the year ahead of me were Frank Auerbach and Joe Tilson. | 0:19:09 | 0:19:15 | |
So I was also aware of the seriousness of painting. | 0:19:15 | 0:19:20 | |
In my year was... was Leon Kossoff | 0:19:20 | 0:19:23 | |
and then the following year was Richard Smith and Robyn Denny. | 0:19:23 | 0:19:27 | |
So all around me were all these other kinds of art going on, so I was aware of the Abstract Expressionists. | 0:19:27 | 0:19:34 | |
And I think if you are a painter, | 0:19:34 | 0:19:37 | |
you...you automatically go where you're taken almost. | 0:19:37 | 0:19:42 | |
I knew I was a realist painter. | 0:19:42 | 0:19:45 | |
I always had this ambition to be an Abstract Expressionist | 0:19:45 | 0:19:49 | |
and I finally dealt with it many years later and did a picture | 0:19:49 | 0:19:54 | |
called Am I Too Late To Be An Abstract Expressionist? | 0:19:54 | 0:19:59 | |
I tried it, splashed some paint on. | 0:19:59 | 0:20:01 | |
But you... | 0:20:01 | 0:20:03 | |
I suppose it's like a kind of track almost that you get onto and it leads you through. | 0:20:03 | 0:20:08 | |
You almost don't make the decisions. You just find you're on a path. | 0:20:08 | 0:20:13 | |
One path from the 1950s and '60s that goes through your career is the use of collage | 0:20:13 | 0:20:19 | |
in many famous pieces. It seems to me that that was increasingly part of this great stream | 0:20:19 | 0:20:26 | |
of competing images - TV and advertising and movies and magazines. | 0:20:26 | 0:20:32 | |
And that in a way you wanted to reflect that, the kaleidoscope of images. | 0:20:32 | 0:20:38 | |
I was actually told at a very specific time about collage. | 0:20:38 | 0:20:42 | |
Richard Smith, who I shared a flat with, taught me about Kurt Schwitters. | 0:20:42 | 0:20:46 | |
He said, "He picks up bus tickets," so for years I always included a bus ticket. | 0:20:46 | 0:20:53 | |
I felt that a collage always had to have a bus ticket in it. | 0:20:53 | 0:20:57 | |
But once it was offered to me as a medium, I embraced it and I'm still using it to this day. | 0:20:57 | 0:21:03 | |
I think it's not easier than painting, but it's... | 0:21:03 | 0:21:08 | |
In a way, it's using another material and it's using found art | 0:21:09 | 0:21:14 | |
and the very early collages were exactly like Schwitters'. | 0:21:14 | 0:21:18 | |
I would find a bit of wood and a bus ticket and maybe some sweet wrapping | 0:21:18 | 0:21:23 | |
and make these little tiny collages. | 0:21:23 | 0:21:26 | |
And it's gone on from then where now I'm making a kind of collage on the computer. | 0:21:26 | 0:21:31 | |
I can't do it, but we... | 0:21:31 | 0:21:35 | |
We've done a whole recent series called The Butterfly Man, six feet by five, and designed on the computer. | 0:21:35 | 0:21:42 | |
-It's exactly the same technique. -You say that you can't do it, | 0:21:42 | 0:21:47 | |
but you could, presumably? | 0:21:47 | 0:21:49 | |
There isn't time for me to get really proficient. I don't want to just play with it. And I'm a Luddite as well. | 0:21:49 | 0:21:55 | |
I don't wear a watch, don't have a mobile phone and there's no way I'll ever work a computer. | 0:21:55 | 0:22:01 | |
In one of those early collages, On The Balcony, | 0:22:01 | 0:22:05 | |
another thing that collages do is put art within popular culture or vice versa. | 0:22:05 | 0:22:11 | |
So you have magazine covers in that and that was one thing going on in the '60s which was useful for you - | 0:22:11 | 0:22:18 | |
-the rise of the magazine. -It's interesting you say it's a collage. It's a painting. | 0:22:18 | 0:22:24 | |
-Oh. -No collage. -Of course! -No collage at all, but that's one of the art games I've played with myself. | 0:22:24 | 0:22:31 | |
The sort of trick playing of making a collage look like a painting | 0:22:32 | 0:22:38 | |
and sometimes making a painting be like a collage. | 0:22:38 | 0:22:42 | |
-I know you know it's a painting... -Yes. -..but it's interesting that you called it a collage. | 0:22:42 | 0:22:48 | |
But what I was doing with that painting, it was a set subject at the Royal College of Art. | 0:22:48 | 0:22:53 | |
You were given two choices. I recall that the other choice was the story of Lot, a biblical story. | 0:22:53 | 0:23:00 | |
Or On The Balcony. So I researched and found all the "on the balconies" that I could | 0:23:00 | 0:23:07 | |
and then presented them with three children sitting on a bench holding up magazine versions. | 0:23:07 | 0:23:15 | |
Ladies and gentlemen, presenting Her Royal Majesty. | 0:23:16 | 0:23:21 | |
TRUMPET FANFARE | 0:23:21 | 0:23:23 | |
-# -There she goes Her Royal Majesty | 0:23:25 | 0:23:30 | |
-# -She's the Queen... -# | 0:23:30 | 0:23:32 | |
This picture is an oil painting. | 0:23:32 | 0:23:35 | |
There are about 27 different versions of On The Balcony in it. | 0:23:35 | 0:23:40 | |
When I did this picture, people said, "Why did you bother to paint them? Why didn't you stick them on?" | 0:23:41 | 0:23:47 | |
You just can't win. | 0:23:47 | 0:23:49 | |
So that was the reason for that particular painting, | 0:23:49 | 0:23:53 | |
but by then in the Air Force it was part of my week to go to a little house on the aerodrome | 0:23:53 | 0:24:00 | |
and buy Picture Post. So right from the beginning I've loved magazines, and still do. | 0:24:00 | 0:24:06 | |
That's the other social subset you belong to, apart from evacuees - the National Service generation. | 0:24:06 | 0:24:13 | |
Was that a happy time or just an inconvenience? | 0:24:13 | 0:24:17 | |
It was an inconvenience. I'd already got in to the Royal College. I had this to look forward to. | 0:24:18 | 0:24:24 | |
I didn't have an awful time. You'd be 30 men in a Nissen hut. | 0:24:24 | 0:24:29 | |
There would be nights with fights and play fights and beds being turned over, pillows thrown. | 0:24:29 | 0:24:34 | |
I would blissfully sleep through it. I was incredibly shy until then. | 0:24:34 | 0:24:40 | |
Pathologically shy. | 0:24:40 | 0:24:42 | |
And suddenly to be with 30 men, you can't be shy. | 0:24:42 | 0:24:46 | |
There's no way you can be shy, so it was good for that. I met people I wouldn't have met otherwise. | 0:24:46 | 0:24:52 | |
And you come out of the Second World War and we're moving into the Cold War era. | 0:24:52 | 0:24:58 | |
Did you believe, as many people did at that time, that you'd end up, your generation, fighting a war? | 0:24:58 | 0:25:05 | |
I was in the Air Force at the time of the Korean War. | 0:25:05 | 0:25:09 | |
It was unlikely I would have gone. I was a teleprinter operator. | 0:25:09 | 0:25:13 | |
I think it just overlapped. I was in from '51 to '53. | 0:25:13 | 0:25:18 | |
So the possibility was there. | 0:25:18 | 0:25:21 | |
And certainly the possibility that there would be a war with Russia | 0:25:21 | 0:25:26 | |
was very much in the air. | 0:25:26 | 0:25:29 | |
But I didn't ever think I would be fighting. Luckily, I was too young to fight in the World War | 0:25:29 | 0:25:35 | |
and I never envisaged I would actually be a fighting machine. | 0:25:35 | 0:25:40 | |
-And you never went to the opposite extreme of being a pacifist or conscientious objector? -No. | 0:25:40 | 0:25:47 | |
And David, to his credit, David Hockney did. | 0:25:47 | 0:25:51 | |
And he had horrible jobs in hospitals for his two years. | 0:25:51 | 0:25:56 | |
And some of the other artists, some went to great lengths not to do it. | 0:25:56 | 0:26:01 | |
There was a trick of pretending you were gay | 0:26:01 | 0:26:05 | |
and a couple of people shot their toes off, I think. A lot of people pretended they were mad. | 0:26:05 | 0:26:12 | |
I kind of didn't bother. I didn't want to shoot a toe off. | 0:26:12 | 0:26:16 | |
I just accepted that I would do the National Service. I had the Royal College to look forward to. | 0:26:16 | 0:26:22 | |
It was a missing two years, but it was OK. I travelled a bit. | 0:26:22 | 0:26:26 | |
I went to Belfast, I went to some nice places in the West Country. It was OK. | 0:26:26 | 0:26:34 | |
One of the key early paintings, Self-Portrait With Badges, which I've always liked a great deal, | 0:26:34 | 0:26:40 | |
there are many things going on there. It's technically striking. | 0:26:40 | 0:26:44 | |
You get portraits within a portrait in an almost Magritte way. | 0:26:44 | 0:26:48 | |
What led you to that painting? | 0:26:48 | 0:26:50 | |
I was doing it specifically to send to the John Moores competition in 1961. | 0:26:50 | 0:26:56 | |
And I think the idea, in a way, was almost to present myself... | 0:26:56 | 0:27:00 | |
It was going back to... to Children With Badges. | 0:27:00 | 0:27:04 | |
At that point, an adult wouldn't have worn a collection of badges. | 0:27:04 | 0:27:08 | |
They would have worn one badge, you know, if they were in the Women's Institute or something. | 0:27:08 | 0:27:15 | |
I think what was interesting about it, which is the point you're making, | 0:27:15 | 0:27:19 | |
is that the badges kind of added information. | 0:27:19 | 0:27:23 | |
Curiously, it's false information because I only had those badges. | 0:27:23 | 0:27:27 | |
I'd only collected, like, 20. | 0:27:27 | 0:27:30 | |
One of them said, "I'm madly for Adlai" and I don't think I even knew who Adlai Stevenson was! | 0:27:30 | 0:27:37 | |
So some of it is false information, | 0:27:37 | 0:27:40 | |
but some... I like Elvis and I was holding an Elvis magazine with Elvis talking to Tuesday Weld. | 0:27:40 | 0:27:47 | |
So hints about what I was interested in were coming out. | 0:27:47 | 0:27:52 | |
The Elvis identification was real? | 0:27:52 | 0:27:55 | |
The Elvis... | 0:27:55 | 0:27:57 | |
Again, he isn't my favourite rock'n'roller. | 0:27:57 | 0:28:01 | |
I prefer Chuck Berry and Little Richard and the Everly Brothers, | 0:28:01 | 0:28:05 | |
but if you're painting about icons, | 0:28:05 | 0:28:08 | |
you have to take the chief icon | 0:28:08 | 0:28:10 | |
so if it's a blonde actress, it's got to be Marilyn Monroe. | 0:28:10 | 0:28:17 | |
'If it's a young French actress, it's got to be Brigitte Bardot.' | 0:28:17 | 0:28:21 | |
This is like living in Girls' Town. | 0:28:23 | 0:28:26 | |
If it's a rock'n'roller, it's got to be Elvis. So I accepted that he is the main motif, the main idol. | 0:28:30 | 0:28:37 | |
And then I've got a big collection of Elvis material | 0:28:37 | 0:28:42 | |
and I've made quite a lot of art including him. | 0:28:42 | 0:28:45 | |
One of the very early pop art pictures was two transfers that you got in Boyfriend magazine | 0:28:45 | 0:28:51 | |
of Elvis and Cliff. Well, I was only a Cliff fan for about a day, I think. | 0:28:51 | 0:28:57 | |
I saw him at Chiswick Empire | 0:28:57 | 0:29:00 | |
when he was really young and he was brilliant. | 0:29:00 | 0:29:04 | |
As soon as he did Living Doll, I stopped being a fan. | 0:29:04 | 0:29:08 | |
Why such an extreme reaction? | 0:29:08 | 0:29:10 | |
It was a horrible song! | 0:29:10 | 0:29:13 | |
The other striking thing about that Self-Portrait With Badges is you were already 29 at the time. | 0:29:14 | 0:29:20 | |
And yet you're entirely recognisable as you are now. | 0:29:20 | 0:29:23 | |
Do you paint yourself slightly older or was that accurate? | 0:29:23 | 0:29:28 | |
Pretty accurate. | 0:29:28 | 0:29:30 | |
I think probably... Clearly, I've changed a lot, | 0:29:31 | 0:29:36 | |
but I've more or less got the same hair and more or less got the same beard. It's got longer and shorter | 0:29:36 | 0:29:42 | |
and it's greyer now, but I haven't changed that much. | 0:29:42 | 0:29:47 | |
From very early on there are paintings that are abandoned or unfinished. | 0:29:47 | 0:29:52 | |
You've always had a very fluid attitude to what is meant by completed with a painting. | 0:29:52 | 0:29:59 | |
Yes, I think I've had this attitude that everything is always in progress. | 0:29:59 | 0:30:04 | |
And in a curious way | 0:30:04 | 0:30:06 | |
I very rarely have completed a picture to my intentions. | 0:30:06 | 0:30:11 | |
If I'm doing a portrait, I would paint the eye | 0:30:11 | 0:30:16 | |
and then each eyelash and then I'd get involved with whether there was a piece of dust on the eyelash. | 0:30:16 | 0:30:22 | |
So it's infinitesimal. In a way, I never achieve what I set out or what I see in my mind. | 0:30:22 | 0:30:28 | |
So always everything is in progress. | 0:30:28 | 0:30:32 | |
I never abandon anything. There might be pictures in the studio that by now I know I'll never finish, | 0:30:32 | 0:30:39 | |
but they're in progress still. | 0:30:39 | 0:30:41 | |
I'll never make the decision. Only that will be decided when I stop. | 0:30:41 | 0:30:47 | |
-Although you have made the decision that they won't be finished. -Well, usually they have to go. | 0:30:47 | 0:30:53 | |
I mean, with Self-Portrait With Badges, Robyn Denny arrived with the van | 0:30:53 | 0:30:59 | |
that was taking them all and I was still working on it. They carried it out and drove it to Liverpool. | 0:30:59 | 0:31:06 | |
But if you look at the shoes in that, one is painted, the other is very loosely painted. | 0:31:06 | 0:31:12 | |
There's a little strip of detail. That was all I had time to do. | 0:31:12 | 0:31:17 | |
So I accepted the unfinishedness of it and I think it's become part of recognising what I do. | 0:31:17 | 0:31:24 | |
A good example to me is the 1962 Beatles, | 0:31:24 | 0:31:28 | |
where George Harrison isn't, in fact, finished, is he? | 0:31:28 | 0:31:32 | |
None of them are, really. Again, it must have been time running out. | 0:31:32 | 0:31:37 | |
What happened with that painting, in each corner there's a little white empty panel. | 0:31:37 | 0:31:43 | |
My intention was to get them to autograph it. | 0:31:43 | 0:31:46 | |
Paul was the first person to see it | 0:31:46 | 0:31:49 | |
and without actually refusing to autograph it, he managed to leave without autographing it. | 0:31:49 | 0:31:55 | |
I think he wasn't flattered by the way I painted him. | 0:31:55 | 0:31:59 | |
Then there was no point in trying to get them after that. | 0:31:59 | 0:32:03 | |
But it's the same phenomena. | 0:32:03 | 0:32:05 | |
There are usually areas left unpainted. | 0:32:05 | 0:32:09 | |
And some of the classic dates that are given at the end of a painting, it's an astonishingly wide period. | 0:32:09 | 0:32:17 | |
A Mad Tea Party At Watts Tower, 1968 to 1992, | 0:32:17 | 0:32:21 | |
which is 24 years, isn't it? | 0:32:21 | 0:32:24 | |
-But during that period there would be years when you wouldn't go near it? -Probably. | 0:32:24 | 0:32:30 | |
The longest time was the portrait of David Hockney in the Spanish interior. | 0:32:30 | 0:32:35 | |
That I started | 0:32:35 | 0:32:38 | |
in, I think, '64 and I think I finished that... | 0:32:38 | 0:32:42 | |
..probably it was about thirty years. | 0:32:43 | 0:32:47 | |
But I wouldn't be working on it all the time. Again, it's not finished! | 0:32:47 | 0:32:52 | |
I could have it back and work on it some more. | 0:32:52 | 0:32:55 | |
I wondered in terms of inspiration. Can it only happen while you're painting? In a restaurant, | 0:32:55 | 0:33:01 | |
-you wouldn't think of a detail for a painting? -I might. I keep notebooks. | 0:33:01 | 0:33:06 | |
I always carry a notebook and I take notes. | 0:33:06 | 0:33:10 | |
I don't think I've ever had an uncontrollable urge | 0:33:10 | 0:33:14 | |
where I've leapt from the dinner table and ran back to the studio. | 0:33:14 | 0:33:18 | |
I'm sure there are artists who have. I've never done that. | 0:33:18 | 0:33:22 | |
In your notebooks, you write down words or sketches? | 0:33:22 | 0:33:26 | |
Yes, little drawings and lists of things. | 0:33:26 | 0:33:29 | |
I've become an almost obsessive list maker and if I think of a series of words or an idea | 0:33:29 | 0:33:37 | |
or something I might paint in the future, it's a memory aid, really. | 0:33:37 | 0:33:43 | |
Apart from the connection with pop art, another connection that always comes up is The Beatles | 0:33:43 | 0:33:49 | |
because of the painting and Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. | 0:33:49 | 0:33:54 | |
A lot of people who hung out with The Beatles suffered the delusion they were an honorary fifth Beatle. | 0:33:54 | 0:34:01 | |
Did you ever have that yourself? | 0:34:01 | 0:34:04 | |
Well, I suppose, in a curious way, I'm still very close friends with Paul | 0:34:05 | 0:34:10 | |
and went to his son James's birthday party last week, | 0:34:10 | 0:34:14 | |
so only a couple of days ago we were round the piano having a sing-song with Paul McCartney, | 0:34:14 | 0:34:21 | |
so I would count myself as a friend. | 0:34:21 | 0:34:25 | |
And I talked at length to Olivia Harrison. | 0:34:25 | 0:34:29 | |
If George were alive, he would be a friend. | 0:34:29 | 0:34:33 | |
Ringo and I have never particularly got on. | 0:34:33 | 0:34:36 | |
And John, I would say I was a friend of them, yeah. | 0:34:36 | 0:34:40 | |
And John had quite a strong artistic side, didn't he? | 0:34:40 | 0:34:45 | |
He did, absolutely. He was at the art school. | 0:34:45 | 0:34:49 | |
The first time we met, | 0:34:49 | 0:34:51 | |
in the early '60s, | 0:34:51 | 0:34:54 | |
it couldn't have been long after that particular John Moores competition we talked about in '61, | 0:34:54 | 0:35:00 | |
and I won the Junior Prize, which is artists under 35. | 0:35:00 | 0:35:06 | |
And it came up in conversation, the painting. He said, "You shouldn't have won. Stuart Sutcliffe should." | 0:35:06 | 0:35:14 | |
So right from the beginning, he was abrasive. But that was the way he was, part of his personality. | 0:35:14 | 0:35:20 | |
And he was a very interesting, nice man. | 0:35:20 | 0:35:24 | |
That period, the '60s and The Beatles, is now a fabled period. | 0:35:24 | 0:35:28 | |
Did it feel like that at the time? Did you think these were extraordinary times? | 0:35:28 | 0:35:34 | |
You were aware that exciting things were happening. It was very much a renaissance, a rebirth. | 0:35:34 | 0:35:40 | |
I suppose the other answer to that is that I've never, ever done any drugs. | 0:35:40 | 0:35:46 | |
I've never smoked a joint or had any drugs, | 0:35:46 | 0:35:50 | |
and that was an integral part of the '60s, really. | 0:35:50 | 0:35:54 | |
I remember an evening with people who were literally on an LSD trip. | 0:35:54 | 0:35:59 | |
They came to my studio and said, "You've got to take LSD! Your life is incomplete." | 0:35:59 | 0:36:05 | |
So I've had people begging me to take drugs and not. | 0:36:05 | 0:36:09 | |
So I missed that whole aspect. | 0:36:09 | 0:36:12 | |
I wondered about that. A lot of artists and musicians were tempted | 0:36:12 | 0:36:16 | |
because they thought it improved their art, psychedelic art. You were never tempted at all? | 0:36:16 | 0:36:22 | |
I was tempted, but I never accepted. | 0:36:23 | 0:36:26 | |
And I think part of that was possibly technical. | 0:36:26 | 0:36:30 | |
It was smoking. I had smoked as a kid and stopped when I was 12. | 0:36:31 | 0:36:36 | |
I'd kind of forgotten how to smoke. When I was passed a joint, I was embarrassed that I'd do it wrong. | 0:36:36 | 0:36:43 | |
Then, by chance, the next time I chose not to do it, but it was partly technical. | 0:36:43 | 0:36:48 | |
# Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band... # | 0:36:48 | 0:36:53 | |
One of the clearly iconic works, the Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover, | 0:36:53 | 0:36:59 | |
how did that come about? | 0:36:59 | 0:37:02 | |
The Beatles had commissioned a cover already and it had been done by Simon and Marijke, | 0:37:02 | 0:37:08 | |
who later painted the front of the Apple shop. It was a very psychedelic, kind of fairyland cover. | 0:37:08 | 0:37:15 | |
Robert Fraser saw it and Robert was a great friend of both the Beatles and the Stones | 0:37:15 | 0:37:21 | |
and was my art dealer at the gallery I was with at the time. | 0:37:21 | 0:37:26 | |
And he said, "In years to come, it'll just be another psychedelic cover. | 0:37:26 | 0:37:31 | |
"Why don't you do a cover with 'a fine artist'?" | 0:37:31 | 0:37:36 | |
And he said, "Why don't you use one of my artists?" He recommended me. | 0:37:36 | 0:37:41 | |
They'd already got the concept of being Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band | 0:37:41 | 0:37:47 | |
and that was to do with the fact that they felt they couldn't ever tour as The Beatles again, | 0:37:47 | 0:37:53 | |
but maybe they could tour as Sgt Pepper. They knew they couldn't, but it was a concept. | 0:37:53 | 0:37:59 | |
I think Paul had already had the kind of idea of them being in a park. | 0:37:59 | 0:38:04 | |
And my main contribution was to add this kind of magic crowd. | 0:38:05 | 0:38:10 | |
If we did it by making cut-outs and eventually using waxworks, we could choose who their fans would be. | 0:38:10 | 0:38:17 | |
-I then asked John, I asked them all to give me a list of people. -Uh-huh. | 0:38:17 | 0:38:21 | |
I can't remember them all. That was a guru and that's Aleister Crowley, | 0:38:21 | 0:38:27 | |
-Mae West, Lenny Bruce... -Ah. -And Stockhausen. That was one of John's choices, I think. | 0:38:27 | 0:38:34 | |
-WC Fields. -Who's that? | 0:38:34 | 0:38:37 | |
I think it's... I'm not quite sure, but I think it's Jung, probably. | 0:38:37 | 0:38:42 | |
-The whole thing has always been wreathed in mystery. -I know! -Mainly contrived. | 0:38:42 | 0:38:48 | |
We didn't do it. It just... When there were rumours that Paul was dead and this was a stand-in, | 0:38:48 | 0:38:54 | |
one of the rumours was that because this hand was above his head, it was the sign that he'd died. | 0:38:54 | 0:39:01 | |
In fact, it's Issy Bonn waving to his fans! | 0:39:01 | 0:39:04 | |
Beautiful. | 0:39:04 | 0:39:06 | |
-Did you ever listen to any of the music? -I did. I was in the studio. | 0:39:06 | 0:39:11 | |
Most evenings we would go in and hear what they were doing. | 0:39:11 | 0:39:16 | |
I mean, you have incredible memories of going in and seeing John in the corner | 0:39:16 | 0:39:21 | |
just doing the kind of hellos for one of the songs. | 0:39:21 | 0:39:25 | |
Or an evening when we went into the foyer of Abbey Road | 0:39:25 | 0:39:30 | |
and there was a great big carpet laid out and George was sitting round it with about 10 Indian musicians. | 0:39:30 | 0:39:37 | |
And he leapt to his feet and so did they and we met them. | 0:39:37 | 0:39:41 | |
We walked through and they carried on recording George's song, the Indian-inspired song. | 0:39:41 | 0:39:47 | |
And one particular night, Paul said, "Come back to the house | 0:39:47 | 0:39:52 | |
"and listen to this song Lovely Rita Meter Maid." So we heard it the day it was recorded. | 0:39:52 | 0:39:58 | |
Particularly given John's strong views on art, when the art work was revealed to them, | 0:39:58 | 0:40:05 | |
was that a tense moment? | 0:40:05 | 0:40:07 | |
They didn't ever really... | 0:40:07 | 0:40:10 | |
I mean, in a way, they've never said thank you. They didn't respond that much. | 0:40:10 | 0:40:15 | |
We were paid £200 and Robert Fraser, who was probably stoned out of his mind anyway, | 0:40:15 | 0:40:22 | |
signed the contract and signed away any rights I had. Certainly I had no royalties. | 0:40:22 | 0:40:28 | |
But he also signed away the copyright, so people write to me for permission to do something | 0:40:28 | 0:40:34 | |
-and I have to refer them to The Beatles' management. -Does that make you angry? -It did. | 0:40:34 | 0:40:40 | |
-Over the years I've been angry. -You could have made tens of millions. -Oh, if Robert had said, | 0:40:40 | 0:40:46 | |
"They'll give you a penny for each record..." I mean, Paul is a multi-multi-multi-millionaire. | 0:40:46 | 0:40:52 | |
And... | 0:40:52 | 0:40:54 | |
And I only once have kind of touched half a million. | 0:40:54 | 0:40:59 | |
So I'm not... I suppose that is rich to a lot of people, | 0:41:00 | 0:41:05 | |
but it's not compared to The Beatles. I could have been very rich. | 0:41:05 | 0:41:09 | |
Do you ever talk about it with Paul? | 0:41:09 | 0:41:13 | |
No. In a way, I think the friendship is more important. | 0:41:13 | 0:41:17 | |
He perhaps should have talked to me, but I wasn't going to say, "Look, Paul, | 0:41:17 | 0:41:23 | |
"why don't you make up for it and give me some money?" | 0:41:23 | 0:41:27 | |
And now I'm resigned to it, so in a way, emotionally, it's gone. It's not a worry. | 0:41:27 | 0:41:33 | |
We talked about the origins of the term pop art and it was very strongly used in America. | 0:41:33 | 0:41:39 | |
I'm interested in your relationship particularly with Andy Warhol. | 0:41:39 | 0:41:42 | |
There's a certain overlap with the Marilyn Monroe images. Was he an important figure? | 0:41:42 | 0:41:48 | |
He wasn't an influence, no. | 0:41:48 | 0:41:51 | |
We never got on. We met about eight times and he hardly spoke. | 0:41:51 | 0:41:56 | |
I, believe it or not, then didn't speak that much. | 0:41:56 | 0:42:00 | |
The first time, he took me all round The Factory and showed me everything that was going on. | 0:42:00 | 0:42:06 | |
And the last time he came over and had a show. | 0:42:06 | 0:42:10 | |
He painted a British show of dogs. | 0:42:10 | 0:42:13 | |
Especially for London. | 0:42:13 | 0:42:15 | |
And Michael Chow gave a dinner for him at Mr Chow's | 0:42:15 | 0:42:20 | |
and we were all upstairs at the other end of the room | 0:42:20 | 0:42:24 | |
and at one point Michael came over and said, "Andy said he'd love to meet you," as though we'd never met. | 0:42:24 | 0:42:30 | |
I said, "Come on! We've met eight times. We've never had anything to say. I'm not going to come over." | 0:42:30 | 0:42:36 | |
And now I think that was so stupid and churlish and I wish I'd gone over and said hello again. | 0:42:36 | 0:42:42 | |
There's much argument even now over Warhol's reputation with detractors and defenders. | 0:42:42 | 0:42:48 | |
-Where do you think he ranks artistically? -Oh, now I think he's one of the greats. | 0:42:48 | 0:42:53 | |
I mean, the great icons are Andy's Warhol, Andy's Elvis, | 0:42:53 | 0:42:59 | |
Lichtenstein's early battle pictures. | 0:42:59 | 0:43:03 | |
And I don't much like Lichtenstein, but they are great pop art icons. | 0:43:03 | 0:43:09 | |
Your British near contemporary, David Hockney, | 0:43:09 | 0:43:12 | |
there's a conversation with him through your work. There are various pieces. | 0:43:12 | 0:43:18 | |
That is an artistic friendship, that one. | 0:43:18 | 0:43:24 | |
It's both an artistic friendship and just a friendship. | 0:43:24 | 0:43:28 | |
I've done Desert Island Discs. I did it with Roy Plomley and then again with Sue Lawley. | 0:43:28 | 0:43:34 | |
The first time they said, "What would you like your luxury item to be?" I said, "Can it be David Hockney?" | 0:43:34 | 0:43:41 | |
They said, "A David Hockney?" I said, "No, can I take David Hockney? | 0:43:41 | 0:43:46 | |
"We're good friends. We could talk about art on the island and we could draw together." | 0:43:46 | 0:43:52 | |
And they said, "No, you can't take a person," So that's the level of our friendship. | 0:43:52 | 0:43:59 | |
The Brotherhood of Ruralists, | 0:43:59 | 0:44:01 | |
which was the second big movement you were involved with, | 0:44:01 | 0:44:05 | |
Pop Art and a more formal movement... | 0:44:05 | 0:44:08 | |
Was that a conscious change of direction after the '60s? | 0:44:08 | 0:44:12 | |
This was the '70s. You wanted to do something different? | 0:44:12 | 0:44:15 | |
It came out of that. My life is very much split into decades. | 0:44:15 | 0:44:19 | |
And literally at the end of the '60s, there was... | 0:44:19 | 0:44:23 | |
It wasn't a direct feeling - "oh, weren't the '60s great? Let's have a change." | 0:44:23 | 0:44:28 | |
But I think people were tired and a lot of people moved out from London. | 0:44:28 | 0:44:33 | |
It turned into that kind of self-sufficiency mood of the '70s. | 0:44:33 | 0:44:38 | |
And we were part of that. | 0:44:38 | 0:44:41 | |
I went to see David Inshaw and through David we met Graham Arnold | 0:44:41 | 0:44:47 | |
who was at the college at the same time as me. | 0:44:47 | 0:44:50 | |
We were having dinner one night, a group of us, | 0:44:50 | 0:44:54 | |
and talking art and talking about the Pre-Raphaelites. | 0:44:54 | 0:44:58 | |
I think it came up, "Which Pre-Raphaelite would you have liked to have been?" | 0:44:58 | 0:45:03 | |
"I would have liked to have been John Everett Millais." | 0:45:03 | 0:45:07 | |
In a way, it came out of that talking. | 0:45:07 | 0:45:10 | |
We had a meal on each solstice, so in the winter we would have an indoor feast. | 0:45:10 | 0:45:15 | |
In the summer, we would have a picnic. | 0:45:15 | 0:45:18 | |
And finally, we actually gave it a name and became a group and had a manifesto. | 0:45:18 | 0:45:24 | |
And at that point, art politically, it was very unpopular. | 0:45:24 | 0:45:29 | |
Our manifesto was that love was a reason to paint, sentimentality... | 0:45:29 | 0:45:34 | |
The word "sentimentality", which is a filthy word in the art world, | 0:45:34 | 0:45:39 | |
was a valid reason to make a painting, | 0:45:39 | 0:45:42 | |
so we got a lot of stick from the critics and we answered back. | 0:45:42 | 0:45:46 | |
Brian Sewell had a concerted attack on Kitaj and Hockney and I for years. | 0:45:46 | 0:45:52 | |
He seems to have eased up now, but he would write a review of somebody else | 0:45:52 | 0:45:57 | |
and then end it by saying, "But they're nowhere near as bad as the Kitaj exhibition." | 0:45:57 | 0:46:03 | |
He cam... You know, he had a campaign against us. | 0:46:03 | 0:46:07 | |
But it was his job to. He worked for The Standard. | 0:46:07 | 0:46:10 | |
I think if he wasn't nasty, he would have lost his job, but that's by the bye. | 0:46:10 | 0:46:15 | |
It came to a natural end for me when Jann Haworth and I separated in '79. | 0:46:15 | 0:46:21 | |
I came back to London, so by definition... | 0:46:21 | 0:46:25 | |
A ruralist is a city person who moves to the country, | 0:46:25 | 0:46:28 | |
so by definition, I'd come back, so I was no longer... | 0:46:28 | 0:46:32 | |
-The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was quite a dangerous model to take. -Absolutely. | 0:46:32 | 0:46:37 | |
-It had led to terrible sexual complication and fallings-out and everything. -Yeah. | 0:46:37 | 0:46:42 | |
In a way, the Ruralists didn't quite follow that, but it got complicated. | 0:46:42 | 0:46:47 | |
A series of works in the 1990s, | 0:46:48 | 0:46:51 | |
Exhibition of a Rhinoceros in Venice | 0:46:51 | 0:46:54 | |
and the Madonna of Venice Beach series... | 0:46:54 | 0:46:57 | |
They're bringing a lot of what we talked about together. | 0:46:57 | 0:47:01 | |
They bring together the two sides - your knowledge of classical art, but also modern art. | 0:47:01 | 0:47:06 | |
They are a blurring of those two things or a conversation. | 0:47:06 | 0:47:10 | |
I was the third artist-in-residence at the National Gallery, | 0:47:10 | 0:47:14 | |
so the first thing I did was walk the whole of the National Gallery. | 0:47:14 | 0:47:18 | |
There was one particular picture called Exhibition of a Rhinoceros in Venice by Longhi. | 0:47:18 | 0:47:25 | |
I'd been doing the Venice Beach pictures, | 0:47:25 | 0:47:28 | |
so I thought I could place it in Venice Beach, California. | 0:47:28 | 0:47:32 | |
So that's a good start. I can go in on the first day and start that picture. | 0:47:32 | 0:47:38 | |
So it takes... I changed the rhinoceros, | 0:47:38 | 0:47:41 | |
but the first element of the crowd I copied directly from Longhi's painting. | 0:47:41 | 0:47:46 | |
And they're obviously dressed in 17th century Venetian clothes with masks on, | 0:47:46 | 0:47:53 | |
but the next layer of crowd is roller-skaters | 0:47:53 | 0:47:57 | |
and a bunch of gay men | 0:47:57 | 0:47:59 | |
who are kind of laughing at the Venetians, | 0:47:59 | 0:48:03 | |
so a whole story evolved of a rhinoceros in Venice and that was a very good starting point. | 0:48:03 | 0:48:09 | |
By this stage of your life as an artist, almost 60 years of work, | 0:48:09 | 0:48:13 | |
is the technique pretty much established or do you come up against things that you can't do? | 0:48:13 | 0:48:19 | |
Um... My actual way of painting... | 0:48:19 | 0:48:22 | |
I mean, in some way, you learn the business. | 0:48:22 | 0:48:25 | |
The first day you paint, you've got this stick in your hand with hairs on the end | 0:48:25 | 0:48:30 | |
and you've got this surface, | 0:48:30 | 0:48:32 | |
and you don't know that red and yellow, if you mix them together, make orange. | 0:48:32 | 0:48:38 | |
You quickly learn the techniques. You're taught the techniques. Luckily, I was. | 0:48:38 | 0:48:43 | |
So you quickly reach a point of skill and that develops, | 0:48:43 | 0:48:48 | |
but with my actual painting style, I think it's developed because I've got older. | 0:48:48 | 0:48:54 | |
I've got better, I think. | 0:48:54 | 0:48:56 | |
And I'm very much aware now of the unfinishedness of the pictures in the '50s, '60s and '70s, | 0:48:56 | 0:49:03 | |
so I do tend to complete them now to a certain level standard. | 0:49:03 | 0:49:09 | |
I never attain the... the finish I see in my mind which we've talked about, | 0:49:09 | 0:49:16 | |
but they're equally unfinished, if you see what I mean. | 0:49:16 | 0:49:20 | |
But I've got better, I think. | 0:49:20 | 0:49:22 | |
Celebrity has been one of your subjects. We live in a culture that's drenched in celebrity now, | 0:49:22 | 0:49:28 | |
reality TV, blogging and so on. | 0:49:28 | 0:49:31 | |
Are you alarmed by the way we've ended up in modern culture? | 0:49:32 | 0:49:36 | |
Some elements of it. | 0:49:36 | 0:49:38 | |
I mean, about five years ago, I saw one minute of The X Factor. | 0:49:38 | 0:49:43 | |
I was so horrified by this kid being abused by these horrible people, | 0:49:43 | 0:49:49 | |
verbally abused, | 0:49:49 | 0:49:51 | |
I mean, people who shouldn't be auditioning anyway, | 0:49:51 | 0:49:55 | |
so I very much dislike that kind of celebrity. | 0:49:55 | 0:49:59 | |
I think footballers are paid too much. | 0:49:59 | 0:50:02 | |
I admire their skill and I'm still a football fan, | 0:50:02 | 0:50:05 | |
but I think that element of celebrity probably isn't good for them, | 0:50:05 | 0:50:10 | |
so there's a whole element of, of... | 0:50:10 | 0:50:13 | |
I don't know quite how to put it. ..vulgar celebrity that I don't like. | 0:50:13 | 0:50:19 | |
But I adore someone like Kate Moss who is a celebrity and a character. | 0:50:19 | 0:50:25 | |
So I suppose I choose my celebrities. | 0:50:25 | 0:50:28 | |
There should be your level of fame you achieve either through achievement or looks | 0:50:28 | 0:50:33 | |
or whatever it might be or having a good voice and the level's gone all wrong. | 0:50:33 | 0:50:38 | |
People are famous who shouldn't be. | 0:50:38 | 0:50:40 | |
The modern art market has become commercially huge, | 0:50:40 | 0:50:45 | |
astonishing sums being paid for works of art. | 0:50:45 | 0:50:48 | |
-Do you ever feel uncomfortable about that? -I've never been involved with it. | 0:50:48 | 0:50:53 | |
I've always happily gone along in a kind of middle area | 0:50:53 | 0:50:58 | |
where...where I've never been... | 0:50:58 | 0:51:02 | |
Well, I have been broke, but I've never... | 0:51:02 | 0:51:05 | |
I've always done quite well and I've never done very well. | 0:51:05 | 0:51:10 | |
It's only really in the last two years that I've become financially secure, | 0:51:10 | 0:51:16 | |
mainly through printmaking. | 0:51:16 | 0:51:18 | |
There's an area where I can make a print and it sells and I make some money from it and that's very nice. | 0:51:18 | 0:51:24 | |
The paintings have... They're just beginning to... A few have sold for a lot of money. | 0:51:25 | 0:51:32 | |
So maybe I'm about to touch that area, | 0:51:33 | 0:51:37 | |
but I've never been... | 0:51:37 | 0:51:39 | |
It's never been a problem, earning too much. | 0:51:39 | 0:51:43 | |
In general, are you competitive with other artists? | 0:51:43 | 0:51:47 | |
It is a competition, yes. | 0:51:47 | 0:51:49 | |
You think you're better than some people and not as good as others. | 0:51:49 | 0:51:54 | |
But not now. | 0:51:54 | 0:51:57 | |
I announced my retirement at the age of 65, a conceptual retirement. | 0:51:57 | 0:52:02 | |
It wasn't a retirement from work, | 0:52:02 | 0:52:04 | |
but it was a retirement from avarice... And jealousy was one of those things. | 0:52:04 | 0:52:10 | |
So I'm now not jealous of other artists. | 0:52:10 | 0:52:14 | |
To answer your question directly, in that manifesto, | 0:52:14 | 0:52:18 | |
I stopped being competitive and jealous and all those art world things. | 0:52:18 | 0:52:23 | |
But professionally, you're always competing. | 0:52:23 | 0:52:27 | |
In the show Homage 10 x 5, | 0:52:28 | 0:52:30 | |
I've chosen ten artists | 0:52:30 | 0:52:32 | |
and I'm making five pieces in homage to each of them. | 0:52:32 | 0:52:36 | |
One of them is Rauschenberg, | 0:52:36 | 0:52:38 | |
so in a way that's about competition and respect and homage. | 0:52:38 | 0:52:42 | |
When you say you've conceptually retired from things like jealousy, | 0:52:42 | 0:52:47 | |
in reality, psychologically, when so-and-so gets amazing reviews or reputation | 0:52:47 | 0:52:53 | |
or sells for 40 million dollars... | 0:52:53 | 0:52:55 | |
I'm thrilled, I'm thrilled. | 0:52:55 | 0:52:57 | |
I mean, really, something worked. I mean, a transformation happened. | 0:52:57 | 0:53:02 | |
And I can't think of anyone I'm jealous of at the moment. | 0:53:03 | 0:53:08 | |
-In that list of ten, Damien Hirst is in there. -Yeah. -Which would surprise some people. | 0:53:08 | 0:53:14 | |
Kingsley Amis said in literature that one generation had to despise the generation that came after them, | 0:53:14 | 0:53:20 | |
the old had to despise the young, | 0:53:20 | 0:53:22 | |
but the YBAs which some of your generation do quite openly hate, you don't. | 0:53:22 | 0:53:27 | |
It's interesting. It's an interesting question because I absolutely don't hate. | 0:53:27 | 0:53:33 | |
I mean, I think I made a point of being their friend. | 0:53:33 | 0:53:37 | |
I didn't need to be their friend and they didn't need me as a friend, | 0:53:37 | 0:53:41 | |
but I went in the other direction to despising them and a lot of them still are my friends. | 0:53:41 | 0:53:48 | |
And I felt... | 0:53:48 | 0:53:50 | |
I've tried to describe it as a kind of duty almost. | 0:53:50 | 0:53:54 | |
When I was a young artist, I remember when Francis Bacon, who was a friend, | 0:53:54 | 0:54:00 | |
but was a bitchy old queen who yelled at me or something, | 0:54:00 | 0:54:04 | |
so you remember all this stuff. | 0:54:04 | 0:54:07 | |
And I decided I didn't want to not like them | 0:54:07 | 0:54:11 | |
and probably went the other way and kind of befriended them and supported them. Not that they needed it. | 0:54:11 | 0:54:18 | |
But Young British Artists such as Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, | 0:54:18 | 0:54:22 | |
were they properly respectful towards you? | 0:54:22 | 0:54:25 | |
Yeah, I think so. Damien went to Leeds to art school. | 0:54:25 | 0:54:30 | |
In Leeds, they have my picture called Window | 0:54:30 | 0:54:33 | |
which is a deep box | 0:54:33 | 0:54:36 | |
that hangs on the wall, it has a wax head and curtains | 0:54:36 | 0:54:39 | |
and pictures behind the curtains, | 0:54:39 | 0:54:42 | |
so to look into it, you've got to become a voyeur | 0:54:42 | 0:54:45 | |
and you've got to get very close. | 0:54:45 | 0:54:47 | |
You're suddenly very aware of this wax head as a real head, | 0:54:47 | 0:54:51 | |
so he'd seen that and admitted to being influenced by it. | 0:54:51 | 0:54:56 | |
Yeah, I think... I don't know what they say behind my back. | 0:54:56 | 0:55:00 | |
I'm sure some of them say, "Silly old fart, he's stupid," or whatever, | 0:55:00 | 0:55:04 | |
but, um...no, I think there's respect, yeah. | 0:55:04 | 0:55:08 | |
And having announced your conceptual retirement at the age of 65, | 0:55:08 | 0:55:13 | |
do you contemplate ever actual retirement or will you just keep going? | 0:55:13 | 0:55:18 | |
I'll keep going. Since then, at the age of 75, I announced that I was into my late period. | 0:55:18 | 0:55:25 | |
I mean, the idea of that is that I don't want someone, when I've gone, | 0:55:26 | 0:55:31 | |
deciding that my late period started whenever, | 0:55:31 | 0:55:35 | |
so it's started already. | 0:55:35 | 0:55:37 | |
I did have an idea to sign everything and make a stencil saying, "Late period picture number one..." | 0:55:37 | 0:55:43 | |
I haven't actually done that, but again it's a kind of... | 0:55:43 | 0:55:47 | |
..a realignment of my attitude to things | 0:55:48 | 0:55:52 | |
and in a way, in your late period, you can go completely barmy. | 0:55:52 | 0:55:57 | |
I mean, Picasso did all those extraordinary late erotic pieces, | 0:55:57 | 0:56:01 | |
so I've given myself another excuse to be naughty and to do what I want to do. And I'm enjoying that. | 0:56:01 | 0:56:09 | |
Do you have any specific plans as to how you'll go barmy like Picasso in your late period? | 0:56:09 | 0:56:14 | |
I've done it. Yeah, I'm there. Certain things have happened already. | 0:56:14 | 0:56:19 | |
Which are the barmy ones? | 0:56:19 | 0:56:22 | |
Um... It's hard to be specific. I think it's a mood, rather than a particular... | 0:56:22 | 0:56:28 | |
-But it's a total freedom just...? -Yeah, total freedom. | 0:56:28 | 0:56:31 | |
Both mentally and psychologically and aesthetically. | 0:56:31 | 0:56:35 | |
It's complete freedom from whatever the pressures were before, | 0:56:35 | 0:56:39 | |
a freedom from critics, from finance. | 0:56:39 | 0:56:41 | |
Luckily, I'm now financially secure, so it's a freedom from that in a way. | 0:56:41 | 0:56:46 | |
And it doesn't matter what the critics say any more. It's not going to affect me any more. | 0:56:46 | 0:56:52 | |
When you're young, when you've done five pictures | 0:56:52 | 0:56:56 | |
and someone comes along and kicks the shit out of one of them, it is hurtful. | 0:56:56 | 0:57:01 | |
Now it doesn't matter. | 0:57:01 | 0:57:03 | |
How much do you care about posterity as to what critics will say in the future, | 0:57:03 | 0:57:08 | |
as to which paintings will hang in which galleries? | 0:57:08 | 0:57:12 | |
I'd like to be remembered, but again that little phrase sets me off on another path. | 0:57:12 | 0:57:18 | |
I mean, which paintings in which galleries? | 0:57:18 | 0:57:21 | |
My relationship with the Tate, I've never, ever had a picture in Tate Modern, | 0:57:21 | 0:57:26 | |
unless they haven't told me. | 0:57:26 | 0:57:30 | |
There was a time about a year ago, | 0:57:30 | 0:57:32 | |
we went to Tate Britain and there were five shows on that I could have been in. | 0:57:32 | 0:57:37 | |
There was British Pop Art In The '60s that I wasn't in. | 0:57:37 | 0:57:42 | |
There was a show of figurative painting that I could have been in. | 0:57:42 | 0:57:46 | |
They'd done that first show of drawings from the collection which I easily could have been in. | 0:57:46 | 0:57:53 | |
I literally could have been in every category and I wasn't represented, | 0:57:53 | 0:57:57 | |
so my relationship with that particular part of the art world isn't comfortable. | 0:57:57 | 0:58:04 | |
I resent not being represented better. | 0:58:05 | 0:58:08 | |
-Does that answer your question or was that a mad tirade? -No, it absolutely does. | 0:58:08 | 0:58:14 | |
-Sir Peter Blake, thank you. -It's been a real pleasure. | 0:58:14 | 0:58:17 | |
Subtitles by Subtext for Red Bee Media Ltd 2011 | 0:58:35 | 0:58:40 | |
Email [email protected] | 0:58:40 | 0:58:43 |